WERNER HERZOG'S NEW ANTARCTICA FILM FEATURES HENRY KAISER IN MANY WAYS

Werner Herzog's new feature film, ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD, which opens THIS MONTH, JUNE 2008 in cities across the USA, features the music of HENRY KAISER - a longtime Cuneiform associate - in collaboration with his pal David Lindley.

A widely respected avant garde guitarist and improviser, Kaiser has released numerous recordings on Silver Spring/Washington DC-based Cuneiform Records, his most recent being *Healing Force: The Songs of Albert Ayler*. His other Cuneiform recordings include two double disc recordings by *Yo Miles!*, a group dedicated to the late/electric music of Miles Davis that he co-leads with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith; a double disc compilation of his guitar improvisations with Fred Frith, called Friends & Enemies; a CD of his solo improvisations, called *Lemon Fish Tweezers*, and a various artists compilation of acoustic guitar music called *156 Strings*, which he both curated and appears on. In addition to his work on Cuneiform, Kaiser has released numerous recordings on other labels, including Shanachie. Most notably, Kaiser and Lindley released 3 CDs in the A WORLD OUT OF TIME series of Malagasy collaborationson Shanachie, which was nominated for a Grammy. Very recently, Kaiser released a recording of shakuhachi-guitar duets with Kiku Day: ZEN KAIJU. Imagine that Hiroshi Teshigahara directed GOJIRA (GODZILLA), instead of Inoshiro Honda, with a soundtrack by Toru Takemitsu, to get an idea of the nature of the unusual ZEN KAIJU project....

But Kaiser is not only a musician whose music is internationally acclaimed - he is also a professional underwater videographer AND a movie producer and filmmaker. Besides supplying the music with Lindley for Herzog's Encounters, he also produced the movie and did all of the underwater photography; as well as appearing as a character on camera.

Whether it be experimenting with guitar riffs from outer space or experimenting with science, deep beneath the ice of Antarctica's Ross Sea, Henry Kaiser is no stranger to pushing the limits. Now, Kaiser is at it again with his new project. *Encounters at the End of the World.* Henry Kaiser again takes on a new challenge by not only producing the film and composing the music for the film's soundtrack, but also by taking on the role of cameraman down in the frigid climate of mysterious Antarctica.

For decades Henry Kaiser has been known as a world renowned avant-garde musician. He has been widely recognized as one of the most creative guitar players and improvisers. His music has been described as unique, exciting, and adventurous. Before his recording career began, Kaiser was a professional film and TV director. Recently Kaiser had several projects where he has made great strides working with Werner Herzog. Kaiser and Herzog explored life with a pack of grizzly bears and then dove down deep into the sea.

Now, working on their fourth collaboration, Kaiser and Herzog decided to invade the secret sides of Antarctica and uncover some of the polar mysteries, human and inhuman, of one of Earth's last unexplored territories. *Encounters* has already earned rave reviews at the Telluride Film Festival and it opens to the public this summer.

The New York Times, June 11, 2008, *How Many Goodly Creatures Are There on Mr. Herzog's Planet* By MANOHLA DARGIS

*Few filmmakers make the end of days seem as hauntingly beautiful as Werner Herzog does, or as inexorable. In his documentary *Encounters at the End of the World,* this professional madman and restlessly curious filmmaker travels to the blinding white of the Antarctic, where he meets Melancholic scientists, brooding journeymen and various poets of the soul who, ensconced in the American headquarters, McMurdo Station, have traveled so far beyond the familiar coordinates? so far beyond traditional cities, suburbs and banal existence? that they might as well be on another planet.

Call it Planet Herzog. And make no mistake: from his familiar droning voice-over to his ethereally lovely images and stubborn fatalism, this is very much Werner Herzog's story of the Antarctic and not, as he intimates right up front, a heartfelt tale of *fluffy* penguins. ...

Like many of Mr. Herzog's movies, fiction and nonfiction, *Encounters at the End of the World* itself has the quality of a dream: it's at once vivid and vague, easy to grasp and somehow beyond reach. Its inspiration can be found in his 2005 movie, *The Wild Blue Yonder,* a self-described science fiction fantasy (about outer and inner spaces, for starters) that mixes fiction with nonfiction. Its most striking nonfiction moments come courtesy of the underwater video images shot in the Antarctic by his friend and sometime composer, the guitarist Henry Kaiser, of divers swimming in the eerie blue under a shelf of crystal ice. (Mr. Kaiser produced this new movie and, with David Lindley, did its plaintive, effective string-centric music.)

These same underwater explorers return in *Encounters at the End of the World,* floating in cerulean amid otherworldly creatures... I could watch these surreal creatures for hours, and from the way he returns to these images, you get the sense that so could Mr. Herzog. But there are other sights and sounds to marvel at...

One of the beauties of *Encounters at the End of the World* is that all the furry and floating animals are no more wondrous than the bipeds tramping through and around McMurdo: the linguist turned philosopher, the banker turned bus driver and the female adventurer who, for drama and odd entertainment, likes to have herself zipped up in a carryall bag. ...

If this were a nature documentary like any other, the casual talk about global warming and other calamities might cast shadows across this bright expanse. But there's something about Mr. Herzog ...that inevitably keeps his pictures from growing too dark. One reason is beauty, which in his hands has a way of keeping the worst at bay; it is, after all, hard to fully despair in the face of so much of the natural world's splendors. Another reason, I think, has to do with Mr.Herzog's seemingly unshakable faith in human beings, who for all their misdeeds at times reach a state of exaltedness. They soar? just like that jellyfish.*

*...The result isn't quite documentary, isn't quite fiction- call it a cine mashup. ... The Wild Blue Yonder may be the strangest sci-fi film since Stanley Kubrick's 2001.

It began with a suicide mission. In September 2003, nearly eight years after the unmanned space probe Galileo began surveying Jupiter and its moons, NASA sent final orders: Plunge directly into the depths of the gas giant and vaporize. Herzog was drawn to the grandeur of the spacecraft's demise, and he started combing through the Galileo program archives at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. There he stumbled across a forgotten 16-mm film from the 1989 space shuttle mission...

About a year later, Herzog watched some video taken by Henry Kaiser, his soundtrack producer on Grizzly Man. Kaiser, who moonlights as a research diver, had shot the footage on an expedition to the Ross Sea, off Antarctica. The mesmerizing images of ethereal jellyfish and swarms of crystalline microorganisms mingling in a cobalt twilight beneath a 20-foot-thick sheet of ice looked like downloads from an extraterrestrial iPod. *I felt, ÔThis is not our planet,'* Herzog says.

He doesn't recall exactly what inspired him to stitch the underwater footage together with NASA's material, but something clicked. *I saw a film very clearly in front of me,* Herzog says. In his reimagining, the shuttle astronauts are no longer deploying a probe- they're embarking on a one-way mission to a planet in the distant Andromeda galaxy. And Kaiser's jellyfish are native not to the Antarctic but to that alien world, with its liquid helium atmosphere and frozen sky. Herzog's name for this exotic place: the Wild Blue Yonder.

...The Wild Blue Yonder is about as far from a Matrix-style popcorn flick as you can get. But what Herzog's film lacks in adrenaline, it makes up in sheer visual rapture.

Take the sequence titled *Mysteries of the Blue Yonder,* in which the explorers finally reach the faraway planet. It opens with a wide shot: A vast, vaulted ice canopy stretches over the horizon as two human silhouettes descend through a glowing portal into the dim indigo void. They fan out weightlessly, their breath echoing like whispers in an empty cathedral. Something approaches- a speck, silently swelling into what looks like a translucent bullet lined with undulating fringes of silk. The creature hovers in close-up, then darts away in a cascade of ice shards; dissonant music fades, then swells as the humans forge farther into the blue-green deep. The raw material may have come from Kaiser's Antarctic adventure, but with just a few deft cuts and some haunting voice-over, Herzog has conjured a convincing liquid exoplanet. (James Cameron, eat your heart out.)*

4 stars... *If I show weakness, I'm dead. They will take me out, they will decapitate me, they will chop me up into bits and pieces -- I'm dead. So far, I persevere. I persevere. So speaks Timothy Treadwell, balanced somewhere between the grandiose and the manic, in Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man."

He is talking about the wild bears he came to know and love during 13 summers spent living among them in Alaska's Katmai National Park and Reserve. In the early autumn of 2003, one of the bears took him out, decapitated him, chopped him up into bits and pieces, and he was dead. The bear also killed his girlfriend. ...

"Grizzly Man" is unlike any nature documentary I've seen; it doesn't approve of Treadwell, and it isn't sentimental about animals. It was assembled by Herzog, the great German director, from some 90 hours of video that Treadwell shot in the wild, and from interviews with those who knew him, including Jewel Palovak of Grizzly People, the organization Treadwell founded. She knew him as well as anybody.

Treadwell was a tanned, good-looking man in his 40s with a Prince Valiant haircut, who could charm people and, for 13 years, could charm bears. He was more complex than he seemed. ...

"I have seen this madness on a movie set before," says Herzog, who narrates his film. "I have seen human ecstasies and darkest human turmoil." Indeed, madness has been the subject of many of his films, fact and fiction...

The documentary is an uncommon meeting between Treadwell's loony idealism, and Herzog's bleak worldview. Treadwell's footage is sometimes miraculous, as when we see his close bond with a fox who has been like his pet dog for 10 years. Or when he grows angry with God because a drought has dried up the salmon run and his bears are starving. He demands that God make it rain and, what do you know, it does.

Against this is Herzog, on the soundtrack: "I believe the common character of the universe is not harmony, but hostility, chaos and murder." And over footage of one of Treadwell's beloved bears: "This blank stare" shows not the wisdom Treadwell read into it, but "only the half-bored interest in food."

"I will protect these bears with my last breath," Treadwell says. After he and Amie become the first and only people to be killed by bears in the park, the bear that is guilty is shot dead. His watch, still ticking, is found on his severed arm. I have a certain admiration for his courage, recklessness, idealism, whatever you want to call it, but here is a man who managed to get himself and his girlfriend eaten, and you know what? He deserves Werner Herzog.*

*Guitarist Henry Kaiser resurrects Albert and not his signature music, Witches and Devils (1201, 1964), Bells (Calibre, 1965), and Spirits Rejoice (ESP Disk, 1965), but his least understood. He takes on those last three albums with all the naivety and spirituality/psychedelia they delivered.

Kaiser, a first class free improviser, has of late been a force behind the Yo Miles! project with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, playing the equally misunderstood 1970s electric Miles Davis music.

The guitarist assembled a band to cover these controversial tunes, including vocalist Aurora Josephson to sing the lyrics of Mary Parks aka Mary Maria. The beauty of this music is not a Lincoln City Jazz note-for-note replay of what once was, but tribute to the feel of the times with it's Black nationalism, urban unrest, war protests, and turmoil. Seems that everything old is new again.

Saxophonist Vinny Golia was a perfect choice to play the Ayler parts as he unleashes a powerful growl from note one. The title track is a testament to late Coltrane and the spirituality of the creators. These were not wrathful men, these were the blessed peace makers sent to deliver a message ignored for the last fifty years.

Like the original albums, the music is slightly off-balance. All hippie-fed by outward streaming horns and guitar makes one either take note or turn off. Kaiser and his crew make a solid argument that even Ayler's late music bears some critical attention. Maybe even adoration.*

*Saxophonist Albert Ayler was a restless genius. He was a ferocious improviser, extreme in his innovations, uncompromising in his approach. ...

Ayler was accused of selling out when he released Love Cry (1967), New Grass (1968) and Music is the Healing Force of the Universe (1969)?all on Impulse!?on which he returned to R&B and more thematic concepts. That decried the freedom that Ayler gave to himself to seek new directions. Now, forty years later, guitarist Henry Kaiser brings home the fact that there was a lot more on those albums than first thought, and that it was time to realize all the underlying ideas.

Kaiser brought together seven musicians who chose the songs that would be representative of Ayler's later work. All the selections are first takes, bringing to fruition the idea of the musicians letting the music play through them to make a powerful statement. ...

The passing of guitarist/folk archivist John Fahey last year makes this new compilation even more poignant. A tireless innovator who re-introduced the lost beauty of the finger-picked, acoustic steel-sting guitar (by way of several samplers on his own Takoma label), Fahey was credited for launching the careers of Leo Kottke, Peter Lang and Robbie Basho (among many others) while providing one of the few pre-New Age, all-acoustic forums for guitar lovers.

Curated by new music string-slinger Henry Kaiser, 156 Strings features 19 different guitarists and their distinctive approaches to the instrument. Like Fahey's enriching collections, 156 Strings features everyone from marquee players and obscure experimentalists, in a variety of styles that will sway the soul and stagger the imagination. From the body tapping/string rattling technique of Fred Frith's "access" and the bittersweet melody of Richard Thompson's "How Does Your Garden Grow?," to the extended bow and scratching method of Janet Feder's "Lightning Strikes" and hot-bop licks of Richard Leo Johnson's "Hazard Play," this disc serves to affirm that the acoustic guitar is still music's most versatile, expressive and gregarious instrument.

Followers should note the advent of several exceptional electric players here, like Mike Keneally, Nels Cline and Jean-Paul Bourelly, who rarely unplug except for this occasion. Exceptionally recommended.

Looking back on guitar history during the 1970s and 1980s, it seems like Henry Kaiser and Fred Frith are separated by a generation. After all, Frith got his steely nerve from Henry Cow, who formed in the early 1970s, and Kaiser seemed to step into his own as a brilliant musician fully formed in the late 1970s. The pair has always been tight--and close in both age and temperament--as this two-CD set demonstrates. Kaiser and Frith alternate squiggles and wiggles and string tickles here, giving lots of attention to the details of improvised abstractions. They also sink their picks into an assembly of song structures that sometimes verges on the absurdly bouncy and beat-driven, even when at the core of their sound the pair could spin into the ether with ringing, caustic finality. Frith loves to tinker with the actual guitar, altering the machine's ability to project the expected sounds. Kaiser, by contrast, seems perfectly seated when controlling the projections and mangling, tangling, and laying them in disconnected lines. If you're in need of two generously packed reams of guitar genius, Kaiser and Frith offer one of free music's best opportunities, and this is pinnacle work for both. --Andrew Bartlett

Down Beat (pp.58-59) - "A good deal of stretched-out modal intensity energizes the long jams....It may be a project designed for festivals - catchy concept, accessible music, funky draw - but as such it's an excellent one."

Bill Tilland, All Music Guide, www.allmusic.com - *...this third double-CD in the Yo Miles! series should be a sure winner for any jazz fusion enthusiast. ...it seems motivated solely by trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and guitarist Henry Kaiser's desire to honor Davis' major contribution to jazz and funk history without wrapping the whole project up in a shroud of high seriousness and musical purism. Still, when all is said and done, the music should speak for itself -- and this music speaks loud and clear. ... [4½ stars]*

Rex Butters, All About Jazz, July 04, 2005, www.allaboutjazz.com - *... Once again they take some of the fiercest and most revolutionary music of the 20th Century and manage to reimagine it while remaining faithful to the earth-rending originals. ...they go beyond tribute band status to compose new works that uncannily match the menace and majesty of the originals. ...*

Robert Silverstein, 20th Century Guitar - *Offbeat, heady stuff firmly entrenched in the realm of funky fusion... Kaiser and Co. burn their way through a number of classics long associated with jazz icon Miles Davis. ...Davis classics are given a new lease on life... ... A wild sonic ride that stretches the borders of modern music, Upriver is a solid tribute to his dark, electrifying musical mystique. Yo Miles! reestablishes Kaiser?best known for his avant gard works with Jerry Garcia, David Lindley and Fred Frith among the most daring and creative guitarists currently recorded today.*

Yo Miles!: Sky Garden

Henry Kaiser; Wadada Leo Smith(2004)

Reviews:

Rolling Stone (p.172) - "This is no tribute act: The jamming is bold and connected - these guys play as a band - and Smith, holding down the Davis chair, blows and blows up the trumpet themes with original heat."

JazzTimes (p.114) - "As one tune segues to the next, the saxes and sneering guitar distortion improbably coexist for a few thrilling moments....They make the experiment worthwhile."

All Music Guide - "Highlights are numerous. Everyone gets some solo space, and they take full advantage. Smith's solos on both trumpet and electric trumpet are fantastic, as is the playing from Greg Osby and John Tchicai. The three guitarists (Henry Kaiser, Mike Keneally, and Chris Muir) are consistently dazzling... The playing is incredible from start to finish, and the recording quality is superb. Sky Garden is not an attempt to simply imitate the classic sounds of decades past; this is music that is vital and alive thanks to these top-notch improvisers. Anyone into Miles Davis' early-'70s legacy or folks wondering if there's any worthwhile, non-flaccid jazz fusion is urged to check out this band. They're hot.* http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:hjfuxq9aldfe

The Wire, Brian Morton, #128, Oct. 2004 - *Davis's electric albums were conceived in such a muddle of emotions and market ambitions that most of their creative energy was dissipated in a critical debate... Smith and Kaiser have recovered some of their radical energy and reapplied it in the context of a new technology that gives this music clarity as well as thudding power. Yes, carry on wading through the Jack Johnson sessions if you want some insight into how Miles worked, but if you want to see where his example leads us, this is the way to go. *

All About Jazz Los Angeles, Rex Butters, Aug. 2004, v. 2, #6 - *...Henry Kaiser and Wadada Leo Smith deciphered Miles' original strain, and in '98 recorded Yo Miles!... Now Kaiser and Smith convene a new ritual from the grimoire of the Black Magus, Sky Garden. Another two disc set, the formula remains performing neglected masterwords alongside new compositions that expand the language created by Miles... Kaiser and Smith's knowing explorations through Miles' complex electro-funk realm revisits the dread while expanding the beauty. Loaded with creative originals, Sky Garden suggests a creative vein with more to come.*

Rick Anderson, All Music Guide - Henry Kaiser is responsible, along with his new music co-patriots Derek Bailey, Fred Frith, Eugene Chadbourne, and Glenn Phillips, for expanding the boundaries of guitar playing to a point almost past recognition; it's not at all unusual to hear an entire Henry Kaiser performance that is only vaguely recognizable as coming from a guitar. Lemon Fish Tweezer is a compilation of previously released and unreleased solo improvisations that charts Kaiser's career from his earliest experiments as a neophyte in 1973 to improvisations on Klein and Modulus MIDI guitars in the 1980s and 1990s. Although the music is almost never tonal or even melodic in any meaningful sense, it's almost always beautiful: "Aquirax Aida" is a gentle and sparklingly lovely exploration of bent harmonics, "It's a Wonderful Life" uses echo, distortion, and feedback in surprisingly attractive ways, and "The Nutmeg of Consolation" shows the deep influence of traditional Korean music on his playing. The MIDI tracks aren't always successful; "Red Shadows" sounds like someone messing around aimlessly on the keys of a Casio keyboard, for instance. But using the guitar as a MIDI driver for a drum machine ("Tribute to John French") was a great idea. The program ends with a strangely whimsical and utterly heartbreaking spoken-word and acoustic guitar piece entitled "Meet the Flintstones." Highly recommended.

All Music Guide, Brian Olewnick - *The American guitarists Henry Kaiser and David Lindley were longtime connoisseurs of various musics from around the globe and, in 1991, made a journey to the island country of Madagascar seeking to learn about and record many facets of its contemporary sounds. The island's unique history, with a blending of cultures from South Africa, the Middle East, and India, makes for a music that sounds like no other. This is the first of three volumes that resulted from the trip and it's a major contribution, premiering several groups and musicians who would go on to have successful and productive careers. The music is divided roughly in half with regard to traditional versus pop-oriented songs, with some bands straddling that divide. Tarika Sammy is heard performing a charming number, "Fanaon'ny Ankizy," in an early incarnation of that band before the addition of the two singers, Hanitra and Noro, who would vault the group to some degree of fame and precipitate a rancorous breakup. Two of the major "discoveries" of this venture are the superb singer Dama Mahaleo and the brilliant guitarist D'Gary. Mahaleo is something of the Bob Dylan of Madagascar and the comparison is nothing if not reasonable; his song structures and deep, beguiling voice put most Western singer/songwriters to shame. His brooding song "Kobaka" is a masterpiece, alone worth the price of the disc. D'Gary's guitar work is breathtaking, with attacks and phrasing unheard of in the West, tossed off with misleading ease. Some of the groups, like Rossy and Roger Georges, have something of a cheesy pop quality to them, importing a bit too much of Western rock structures for comfort (Kaiser sits in unnecessarily on a couple of tracks and the closing version of "I Fought the Law" could have been discreetly discarded), but they're more than balanced by brilliant pieces by older Madagascans like Sylvestre Randafison and Rakotofrah. Overall, this is as excellent an introduction to the contemporary state of music in this exotic and fascinating culture as one could desire. Highly recommended.*

Entertainment Weekly, Ty Burr, Jun 05, 1992 - *There's a moment on this album's second cut, a rollicking folk-rock number by Malagasy pop star Rossy, when the sonic waters part to reveal what sounds uncannily like a guitar solo off an old Jackson Browne record. In fact, that really is David Lindley, Browne's old multi- instrumental compadre; he and guitarist Henry Kaiser have returned from the land of lemurs with a miraculous album. The two rounded up the island's master musicians for an extensive recording/jam session-A World Out of Time is the first of five planned releases-and the results are enough to play Twister with your head. Surprisingly, much of the music has a decided Appalachian feel (a central instrument is the zither-like valiha), so U.S. fans of folk, New Age, and lonesome mountain harmonies should find this music both familiar and exotic. Then there's the jug-band stomp featuring 70-year-old flutist Rakoto Frah, the rippling acoustic guitar stunts of D'Gary, and an amazing cover of the Bobby Fuller Four hit ''I Fought the Law'' that touches on rockabilly, zydeco, highland jig, bluegrass, ska, and kabary-a sort of traditional Malagasy form of rap-while never ceasing to rock out. Simply put, the record's a deep-dish delight and one of the richest listening experiences of any genre in any year. A+*

Entertainment Weekly (8/21-8/28/98, p.127) - "The energy level of all involved is way, way up for this densely textured, scrupulously orchestrated reworking of themes from Miles Davis' electric-funk period of the early '70s..." - Rating: B+

The Wire (p.57) - "Smith and Kaiser have recovered some of their radical energy and reapplied it in the context of a new technology that gives this music clarity as well as thudding power."